This invention relates to a television receiver that is available as an information terminal apparatus for household use.
Recently, in addition to their intrinsic capability of receiving television programs, television receivers are being required, as their permeation has reached saturation, to provide home communication capabilities that allow the television receivers to be used as household information terminals. One of these additional capabilities has been implemented on some television receivers in the form of a voice recording/playback system that records or stores a voice message to be played back as required. Recording or storing and playing back voice information is supported by the technology that is used on a telephone apparatus of a type having automatic answering capability.
However, these conventional technologies provide only the message transmitting capability as mentioned above for providing home communication with others, thereby limiting full usage of television receivers as home communication apparatuses.